"Lester, if we split, it would break my heart. There wouldn't be a day that went by from now to the end of time that I didn't regret it. But if we keep going down this path, it's going to cost me my soul. I'd rather be broke than evil." Oh, it felt so *good* to be saying this. To finally affirm through deed and word that he was a good person who would put ethics before greed, before comfort even. Lester looked at Hilda for a moment. "Hilda, this is probably something that Perry and I should talk about alone, if you don't mind." "*I* mind, Lester. There's nothing you can't say in front of her." Lester apparently had nothing to say to that, and the silence made Perry uncomfortable. Lester had tears in his eyes, and that hit Perry in the chest like a spear. His friend didn't cry often. He crossed the room and hugged Lester. Lester was wooden and unyielding. "Please, Lester. Please. I hate to make you choose, but you have to choose. We're on the same side. We've always been on the same side. Neither of us are the kind of people who send lawyers after kids in hospital. Never. I want to make it good again. We can have the kind of gig where we do the right thing and the cool thing. Come on, Lester. Please." He let go of Lester. Lester turned on his heel and walked back into his bedroom. Perry knew that that meant he'd won. He smiled at Hilda and hugged her. She was a lot more fun to hug than Lester. # Sammy was at his desk looking over the production prototype for the Disney-in-a-Box (R) units that Imagineering had dropped off that morning when his phone rang. Not his desk phone -- his cellular phone, with the call-return number blocked. "Hello?" he said. Not many people had this number -- he didn't like getting interrupted by the phone. People who needed to talk to him could talk to his secretary first. "Hi, Sammy. Have I caught you at a bad time?" He could hear the sneer in the voice and then he could see the face that went with the sneer: Freddy. Shit. He'd given the reporter his number back when they were arranging their disastrous face-to-face. "It's not a good time, Freddy," he said. "If you call my secretary --" "I just need a moment of your time, sir. For a quote. For a story about the ride response to your printers -- your Disney-in-a-Box Circle-R, Tee-Em, Circle-C." Sammy felt his guts tense up. Of course those ride assholes would have known about the printers. That's what press-releases were for. Somewhere on their message-boards he was sure that there was some discussion of them. He hadn't had time to look for it, though, and he didn't want to use the Disney Parks competitive intel people on this stuff, because after the Death Waits debacle (debacle on debacle, ack, he could be such a fuck-up) he didn't want to have any train of intel-gathering on the group pointing back to him. "I'm not familiar with any response," Sammy said. "I'm afraid I can't comment --"